Aging Oil Port Holds Promise Of U.S. Shale Exportation.

Managers of the decades-old Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) are looking to upgrade the facility to ship North American shale oil to other countries.

According to Bloomberg, the project would require new infrastructure built with the aid of pledges from shippers, and it would be a year before the first tanker is filled.

The terminal was conceived in 1972, a year before the Arab oil embargo, and opened in 1981. It's owned by units of Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC), Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) and Royal Dutch Shell Pic. (RDSA). It remains the only port in the United States that can unload ultra large crude carriers and very large crude carriers, the two biggest classifications of oil tankers.

For decades, the terminal has been a symbol of U.S. dependence on foreign oil, pumping Nigerian and Saudi Arabian crude from the world's biggest supertankers into underground storage caverns in the marshes of southern...